Tuesday, January 30, 2007

Watch Out for Online Ads That Watch You. Watch Out for Online Ads That Watch You. New Web ads respond to your activities--and this has privacy advocates worried. [PC World: Latest Technology News] 1:23:03 PM  PermaLink   / trackback []

DMCA Reformist To Speak at Stanford This Friday. DMCA Reformist To Speak at Stanford This Friday. Rep. Rick Boucher, who has long proposed legislation to reform the DMCA, will deliver a speech at Stanford Law School on Friday entitled, "Congress Must Balance its Copyright Agenda." More information is available here. [EFF: Deep Links] 1:18:41 PM  PermaLink   / trackback []

EFF - Maine Rejects Real ID. Maine Rejects Real ID. The Real ID Act took a blow last week, when Maine became the first state to formally declare its opposition. The Maine legislature voted overwhelmingly to refuse to comply with the act's mandates, and requested that Congress repeal the law. The Real ID Act essentially forces states to create a national ID. Under the law, state drivers licenses will only be accepted for "federal purposes" -- like accessing planes, trains, national parks, and court houses -- if they conform to certain uniform standards. The law also requires a vast national database linking all of the ID records together. Estimated costs of $12 billion or more will be passed on to the states and, ultimately, average citizens in the form of increased DMV fees or taxes. "It's not only a huge federal mandate, but it's a huge mandate from the federal government asking us to do something we don't have any interest in doing," said Maine's House Majority Leader Hanna Pingree. Meanwhile, opposition in other states is growing. Similar measures rejecting the Real ID Act are under consideration in 11 states, including Montana, Georgia, Massachusetts and Washington state. For more information on the problems with the Real ID Act of 2005, visit EFF's Real ID page, as well as the ACLU's www.realnightmare.org. [EFF: Deep Links] 1:16:36 PM  PermaLink   / trackback []

Real Nightmare - The Real ID Act of 2005 (ACLU) The Real ID Act of 2005 would turn our state driver's licenses into a genuine national identity card and impose numerous new burdens on taxpayers, citizens, immigrants, and state governments - while doing nothing to protect against terrorism. As a result, it is stirring intense opposition from many groups across the political spectrum. This Web site provides information about opposing Real ID. 1:13:51 PM  PermaLink   / trackback []

Why So Many Undervotes in Sarasota? Why So Many Undervotes in Sarasota? The big e-voting story from November[base ']s election was in Sarasota, Florida, where a congressional race was decided by about 400 votes, with 18,412 undervotes. That[base ']s 18,412 voters who cast votes in other races but not, according to the official results, in that congressional race. Among voters who used the ES&S iVotronic machines [~] that is, non-absentee voters in Sarasota County [~] the undervote rate was about 14%. Something went very wrong. But what? Since the election there have been many press releases, op-eds, and blog posts about the undervotes, not to mention some lawsuits and scholarly studies. I want to spend the rest of the week dissecting the Sarasota situation, which I have been following closely. I[base ']m doing this now for two reasons: (1) enough time has passed for the dust to settle a bit, and (2) I[base ']m giving a joint talk on the topic next week and I want to work through some thoughts. There[base ']s no doubt that something about the iVotronic caused the undervotes. Undervote rates differed so starkly in the same race between iVotronic and non-iVotronic voters that the machines must be involved somehow. (For example, absentee voters had a 2.5% undervote rate in the congressional race, compared to 14% for iVotronic voters.) Several explanations have been proposed, but only two are at all plausible: ballot design and machine malfunction. The ballot design theory says that the ballot offered to voters on the iVotronic[base ']s screen was misdesigned in a way that caused many voters to miss that race. Looking at screenshots of the ballot, one can see how voters might miss the congressional race at the top of the second page. (Depressingly, some sites show a misleading photo that the photographer angled and lit to make the misdesign look worse than it really was.) It[base ']s very plausible that this kind of problem caused some undervotes; and that is consistent with the reports of many voters that the machine did not show them the congressional race. It[base ']s one thing to say that ballot design could have caused some undervotes, but it[base ']s another thing entirely to say it was the sole cause of so elevated an undervote rate. Each voter, before finalizing his vote, was shown a clearly designed confirmation screen listing his choices and clearly showing a no-candidate-selected message for the congressional race. Did so many voters miss that too? And what about the many voters who reported choosing a candidate in the congressional race, only to have the no-candidate-selected message show up on the confirmation screen anyway? The malfunction theory postulates a problem or malfunction with the voting machines that caused votes not to be recorded. There are many types of problems that could have caused lost votes. The best way to evaluate the malfunction theory is to conduct a careful and thorough study of the machines themselves. In the next entry I[base ']ll talk about the efforts that have been made toward that end. For now, suffice it to say that no suitable study is available to us. If we had a voter-verified paper trail, we could immediately tell which theory is correct, by comparing the paper and electronic records. If the voter-verified paper records show the same high undervote race, then the ballot design theory is right. If the paper and electronic records show significantly different undervote rates, then something is wrong with the machines. But of course the advocates of paperless voting argued that paper trails were unnecessary [~] while also arguing that touchscreen systems reduce undervotes. Several studies have tried to use statistical analyses of undervote patterns in different races, precincts, and machines to evaluate the two theories. Frisina, Herron, Honaker, and Lewis say the data support the ballot design theory; Mebane and Dill say the data point to malfunction as a likely cause of at least some of the undervotes. Reading these studies, I can[base ']t reach a clear conclusion. What would convince me, one way or the other, is a good study of the machines. I[base ']ll talk next time about the fight over whether and how to look at the machines. Share This [Freedom to Tinker] 1:06:28 PM  PermaLink   / trackback []

New York Settlements Go After Adware Funding. New York Settlements Go After Adware Funding. Three high-profile companies that advertised through nuisance adware programs have agreed to pay fines and reform their practices, according to the New York Attorney General. Attorney General Andrew Cuomo announced Monday that his office had reached settlements with Priceline, Travelocity and Cingular. The settlements arose out of the AG's in-depth investigation of DirectRevenue LLC, a New York-based adware distributor. Cuomo's office says the settlements mark the first time that advertisers have been held responsible for doing business with adware distributors that engaged in deceptive practices. CDT -- which issued two reports last year detailing the ways in which mainstream advertisers were funding nuisance adware -- applauded the settlements. [Center for Democracy and Technology] 1:00:48 PM  PermaLink   / trackback []

Virtual Gold Could Draw Real Taxes. Virtual Gold Could Draw Real Taxes. Congress is investigating whether the IRS should tax online game loot. [PC World: Latest Technology News] 12:52:07 PM  PermaLink   / trackback []

Web Advertisers Settle N.Y. Spyware Lawsuit. Web Advertisers Settle N.Y. Spyware Lawsuit. Three of the most aggressive buyers of online advertising space today agreed to pay fines and reform their advertising practices as part of a landmark anti-spyware settlement. Mobile phone giant Cingular Wireless LLC, and travel sites Priceline.com and Travelocity.com agreed to settle their part in an ongoing investigation by the New York State Attorney General's office, which last year sued adware/spyware purveyor DirectRevenue for deceptively and fraudulently installing its pop-up ad serving and Web tracking software on millions of PCs without approval or consent of consumers. This is an important settlement on a number of levels. Online help forums are awash in desperate messages from consumers whose machines were besieged by pop-up ads after visiting a Web site that used slimy drive-by tactics to install DirectRevenue's software, which is notoriously difficult to remove from a host machine. If you've never read the evidence against DirectRevenue's business practices (this is a company that, according to prosecutors, actually had a department named "Dark Arts"), check out this document for a very entertaining and revealing read. Perhaps more significantly, these advertisers were just as culpable for supporting DirectRevenue's sleazy business practices long after anti-spyware activists like Ben Edelman, Suzi Turner and others published evidence of the illegal distribution methods of DirectRevenue and the Webmasters it paid to install its software. As I catalogued in a Washington Post story published in 2006, experts consistently documented adware bundles like the ones distributed by Directrevenue being installed on computers that contract distributors had already infected with computer viruses and worms. Ari Schwartz, deputy director for the Center for Democracy & Technology, a consumer policy group in Washington, D.C., said today's settlement was important for because it recognizes the oft-overlooked role that advertisers continue to play in supporting the adware and spyware industry. "The dirty secret about unwanted adware is that many legitimate companies -- knowingly or not -- fund its proliferation with their advertising dollars. Until we cut off that funding, there will always be a financial incentive for companies to bombard users with adware that they neither want nor need," Schwartz said in a written statement. While the settlement is a welcome and important one, the terms and fines could have been a bit stiffer. Under the terms of the agreement, all three companies will have to pay between $30,0000 and $35,000 each to New York state, and each will have to more clearly reference the adware vendor in each ad that's displayed. In addition, "prior to contracting with a company to deliver their ads, and quarterly thereafter, the companies must investigate how their online ads are delivered. The companies must immediately cease using adware programs that violate the settlement agreements or their own adware policies." [Security Fix] 12:49:36 PM  PermaLink   / trackback []